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Introduction: With the Trump administration moving against gay rights and reproductive rights, and with the public attention largely focused on yet another mass murder in Las Vegas, we delve back into the archives for the benefit of newer and younger listeners.

On 2/28/1988, we recorded Miscellaneous Archive Show M13: Gay Rights, Reproductive Rights and the Third Reich, highlighting how the nascent, vigorous gay rights movement in Weimar Germany was a focal point for Nazi propaganda and political action. Furthermore, a mass killing by homosexual Fritz Haarmann terrorized Weimar Germany, fueled Nazi anti-gay propaganda and reinforced the public perception in the German populace that the situation was “out of control.”

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld was the lynchpin of the strong gay liberation movement in Weimar Germany and, as a result, was a focal point of Nazi Party propaganda, fueled with the additional fodder of the fact that Hirschfeld was Jewish.

(We note, in passing, that the gay rights movement in Weimar Germany received considerable support from a segment of the country’s feminist community grouped around Dr. Helena Stoecker.)

Historically, German attitudes toward homosexuality were mixed, with some regions manifesting a relatively liberal attitude and enforcement posture and others, an extremely reactionary position in both respects. Paragraph 175 was the official German statute making sex between adults of the same gender illegal. Again, the enforcement of Paragraph 175 was highly selective from a regional standpoint.)

In a manner directly foreshadowing U.S. right-wing propaganda in recent decades, the Nazi Party denounced Hirschfeld and homophile sexual activity as a product of, and a contributor to, the moral decay of the Weimar Republic and democracy in general.

A major contributing factor to the impact of this Nazi propaganda was the Fritz Haarman incident.

In the city of Cologne, Germany, a mass murderer/serial killer named Fritz Haarmann terrorized the city with a gruesome series of killings in which youngsters were lured to his dwelling, killed and their corpses butchered, packaged and sold as “horse meat.” The fact that Haarmann was homosexual contributed to the outrage of many citizens. The gruesome kilings and lurid headlines they generated helped fuel the perception that “something was wrong with society.” (Although there appear to have been many differences, we wonder about the Las Vegas shooting and its effect on the American populace in the context of the Haarmann incident.)

This reinforced the Nazi anti-gay propaganda.

Adding another dimension to the case were the facts that:

Haarmann was an informant for the Cologne police department.

Haarmann carried a Cologne p.d. badge.

The head of the Cologne police department was Gustav Noske, who, as the defense minister of the fledgling Weimar Republic, had formed the military formations that crushed the socialist uprisings that occurred in Germany after the First World War. Those formations, the Freikorps, the Einwohnerwehren and the Zeit Freiwilligen Verbande crushed the uprisings and laid the foundation for what became known as “The Black Reichswehr.” Those “underground” military formations assassinated key political figures in Germany (such as Walther Rathenau), laying the groundwork for the rise of the Nazis.

The Nazi anti-gay propaganda fused with the party’s anti-abortion stance, as gays, advocates for gay rights, women seeking abortions and abortion-rights advocates were tarred with the same ideological brush as being “anti-German” by virtue of the ideological concept that more births of “German stock” strengthened the German nation.

Furthermore, pro-gay rights and pro-abortion positions were lumped into a larger, negative ideological stance grouping both viewpoints in with “Jewish” and “communist” ‘enemies of the state.”

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #979 Nazism, Anti-Gay and Anti-Feminist Propaganda and the Fritz Haarmann Incident”

Wow, it’s like a one-man bigotry showdown here: Roy Moore, the far right theocratic GOP nominee for the Alabama senate race to replace Jeff Sessions, clearly hates both gays people and African Americans. So is there a hierarchy to his his hatred or does he hate these groups about equally?

Well, perhaps these comments he made last November about the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling that legalized gay marriage will help answer that question. According to Moore, Obergefell was actually worse than Dred Scott, the 1857 ruling that upheld slavery and is widely considered the worst Supreme Court decision in history. Yes, according to Moore, the ruling that legalized gay marriage is even worse than the ruling that legalized slavery.

Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore said late last year that the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage was “even worse” than the notorious 1857 Dred Scott ruling that upheld slavery.

Moore, a hard-right former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, has twice been removed from office for refusing to follow the rule of law — the second time for ordering probate judges in his state to disobey the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling legalizing gay marriage. Last November he said that decision was even worse than one that scholars widely consider the worst Supreme Court decision in U.S. history.

“In 1857 the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property. Of course that contradicted the Constitution, and it took a civil war to overturn it. But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender or leading on, as one of the dissenting justices said, to polygamy, to multi-partner marriages,” Moore said in a podcast interview last November, shortly after he was suspended without pay from the court.

“We’ve got to go back and recognize that what they did in Obergefell was not only to take and create a right that does not exist under the Constitution but then to mandate that that right compels Christians to give up their religious freedom and liberty,” he continued.

In Dred Scott the court denied citizenship to African Americans and found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, triggering a backlash that helped lead to the Civil War.

Moore’s comments were made in an interview with Here I Stand, a podcast run by the religious conservative Christian Emergency League, and shared with TPM by the Democratic group American Bridge.

Moore wasn’t the only one on the religious right who compared Obergefell to Dred Scott. It became a talking point from Christian conservatives like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum two years ago. But Moore clearly went a step further by saying the decision was worse, not just listing it as another decision from the court he thought was terrible.

Moore’s remark isn’t the only time he’s waded into murky racial waters in his political and judicial career. As TPM has reported, Moore successfully led the charge against removing segregationist language from the Alabama state constitution, his biggest backer is a neo-Confederate who wants the South to secede again, and Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law hosted the neo-Confederate, pro-secession League of the South’s annual “Secession Day” events in 2009 and 2010, though Moore’s staff claim he didn’t know about the events.

He’s also continued to question whether President Obama was born in the U.S., and his campaign has recently shared racially charged memes during this Senate run.

“The Dred Scott decision ranks as the worst Supreme Court decision in American history and it’s appalling that Moore doesn’t understand that, though sadly not surprising considering his history of embracing white supremacists and pro-Confederate groups,” American Bridge spokesperson Allison Teixeira Sulier told TPM. “Roy Moore is not fit to serve in any capacity, and his hateful views are un-American.”

…

In spite of his controversies, Moore remains the favorite against former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones ahead of the Dec. 12 election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat. He hass held a lead in the mid- to high-single digits in most public and private polling of the race.

““The Dred Scott decision ranks as the worst Supreme Court decision in American history and it’s appalling that Moore doesn’t understand that, though sadly not surprising considering his history of embracing white supremacists and pro-Confederate groups,” American Bridge spokesperson Allison Teixeira Sulier told TPM. “Roy Moore is not fit to serve in any capacity, and his hateful views are un-American.””

Yep, it’s appalling, but not surprising which makes it extra appalling because, of course, he’s the GOP’s nominee. It’s not like this kind of stuff wasn’t known about the guy when he won that primary a month ago. None of this is a surprise and yet he won the primary anyway.

And that leads to the extra extra appalling aspect of all this: Moore is still the favorite to win the general election and become Alabama’s next Senator:

…
In spite of his controversies, Moore remains the favorite against former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones ahead of the Dec. 12 election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old Senate seat. He hass held a lead in the mid- to high-single digits in most public and private polling of the race.
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